Usually, we have a list of Pros and Cons in every review – a scale that tips one way or the other. But we barely have a list of Cons in this one: the Rapoo S500 Bluetooth Headset is just plain awesome.

Unboxing: it’s as though the Rapoo S500 wants to remain neatly packaged and on display; it really is beautiful.

Pros:

It’s barely there. Minimal to the core. Needless structures omitted. Just an arc-band and white speakers on both ends, each encased in plastic; the speakers covered by white-colored soft foam for ear cushion. Adjustable to some degree. Comfortable on your head – not too tight, not too loose.

Easy to pair – as good Bluetooth headsets go. Turn on Bluetooth on your device, detect the Rapoo, pair up. Play music or a movie or make and take calls.

One of the best pairs ever – the Rapoo S500 Bluetooth Headset and our budget smartphone of 2014, the ASUS ZenFone 5. Games, music, movies, calls, everything is awesome.

Controls within reach. Easy to get used to. No complex buttons or jutting-out plastic keys to mar the pristine design.

Clear calls – you can be heard on the other end, clearly, even though you’re in a crowd, more so in a quiet room.

Long battery life. Three days of about 3-4 hours non-stop heavy usage per day. Or about 16 hours of non-stop use. That’s without turning the headset off. When you get home from work or from a jog, turn off your phone’s music player, and leave the Rapoo on, for easy music enjoyment later.

Excellent sound. Although the Rapoo S500’s ear-speakers do not cover your ears like a dome, when the volume is maxed out, you won’t hear on coming traffic. It’s that good – good enough to cancel outside noise. Of course you might not hear cars behind you when you’re jogging, so that’s bad. At slightly lower volumes, you can still hear street sounds. But if you want some kind of audio privacy without a large, chunky, dome-like headset covering your hears, this is it. Thin, light, and loud. Loud without straining vocals, with deep bass, without sounding “desperate” the way cheap headphones go when volume is cranked up to its limit.

Water-resistant. This feature was not indicated on the box or on the insert or on the website. My wife found out about it the hard way. Without an umbrella, with buildings far away, she was caught in a downpour. Still, the Rapoo S500 continued to deliver sound, despite the rain, paired at that time with a waterproof Sony Xperia Acro S.

One of the best phablets for long-hours of movie marathons, because of its great display and long battery life – the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 – is seen here paired with the Rapoo S500 BT headset. When you have this set up during a long commute, nothing else matters. Oh, that USB OTG flash drive is here.

Your powerbank or phone charger can charge the Rapoo S500. So there’s no excuse for you to not experience great audio, anywhere.

Selfie model Deni Villanueva listens to music at work, on the Rapoo S500 Bluetooth Headset.

Cons:

If you really want to push it, well okay. Here:

White color of the speaker foam and plastic are bound to get dirty, smudged, scuffed.

No charger included in the box. Not really a deal-breaker. Because you can use any charger in your house.

Costs around P3,000.00. You can probably get a non-Bluetooth JBL or Urban Ears headphones for a figure slightly below price. Of course, they won’t be water-resistant and the sound may not compare, and there are wires to worry about. Did you know that the wires of my LG G2 and LG G3‘s earphones got chewed up by our cat?

Verdict:

Buy it. We doubt you’ll find a posh pair of headphones this fashionable and (surprisingly) rugged, with audio quality to boast about. Unlike in-ear earphones – both the kind you slide into your ear and the ones you screw into your ear canals – you can have a friend listen in on your playlist by simply lifting the Rapoo off your head and handing it over.

Author

Irwin Allen Rivera

Irwin Allen Rivera loves his wife's cooking so much he's now twice the man he used to be. His English essay won a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in 2012. His philosophical-horror story appeared in Philippine Speculative Fiction 8 (2013). He was managing editor and lead writer of Sites and Symbols 2 (2005), a coffee-table book about buildings in UP Diliman - his alma mater (BA Philosophy; MA Creative Writing continuing). He worked at the UP Diliman Information Office before shifting to web content writing. His sudden fiction, "Notwithstanding Pigs," initially a Friendster testimonial, appeared in Philippines Graphic (2006) and in Very Short Stories for Harried Readers (2007). He used to write for www.technoodling.net.